Fuck Buttons on their Olympic opening ceremony nod: ‘Our music isn’t as snotty as our name’

The electro duo say they never imagine they'd be featured in the Olympics when they chose their name

Fuck Buttons say they never envisaged being asked to feature in big events such as the Olympics when they chose their name.

The electronic duo featured as part of Danny Boyle’s four-hour Olympic Opening Ceremony extravaganza last week (July 27) alongside Paul McCartney and Arctic Monkeys. The Fuck Buttons track ‘Surf Solar’ was played at the start of the event, while a remix of ‘Olympians’ was played during the athlete’s parade.

Also played was a version of ‘Sundowner’ recorded with the London Symphony Orchestra’ by Blanck Mass, which is the side project of the duo’s Ben Power.

Speaking to NME about how they came to be featured in the ceremony, Power says: “Rick from Underworld is a fan of ours and he got in touch with our manager and we jumped at the chance. Working with the London Symphony Orchestra is a dream of mine so just to have that kind of visualised and in an orchestral sense was pretty amazing”.

He added: “It’s such a huge publicity event. Obviously with a name like Fuck Buttons it’s not the kind of thing we get asked to be involved in very often. I think the music speaks for itself though. The music isn’t as snotty as the name!”

Power also said he found it hard to keep the news under wraps. “It was quite hard keeping it a secret. I mean, I’m only human so I told a couple of people, but I just wanted to tell everybody,” he says. “The second the track started playing in the stadium I was like, ‘right I’m gonna tell every fucker I know now'”.

Speaking about the band’s forthcoming third full-length studio album, which they are currently working on, Power said: “It’s sounding good. It’s sounding different. Our palette is constantly changing. The fact that our equipment is always kind of evolving and changing means our sound does as well.”

The compilation of all the music featured in the Opening Ceremony went on sale digitally shortly after the show came to an end in the early hours of Saturday, with more than 10,000 copies being sold immediately afterwards. After being on sale for 24 hours the album reached Number Five on the Official Charts Company’s list of top-selling compilation albums of 2012.